James Foley's boss hits out at 'disgraceful' claims he was murdered a year ago

President Bashar al-Assad's official spokesman claimed the US journalist was
killed last year, despite hostages seeing him alive just weeks ago

James Foley was still alive last month, his former boss saysPhoto: Getty

By Gordon Rayner and Peter Foster

3:46PM BST 25 Aug 2014

Friends of the murdered US hostage James Foley have condemned “disgraceful” claims by the Syrian regime that the journalist was killed a year ago, as a series of contradictory theories about his death took hold.

Bouthaina Shabaan, the political and media adviser to President Bashar al-Assad, said the United Nations had “information” that Mr Foley’s beheading happened last year, as well as claiming that he was kidnapped by the US-backed Free Syrian Army before being sold to his killers.

She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “James Foley was killed a year ago, not now, and they only released the picture now. The UN has the information that he was killed a year ago, so there are a lot of rumours that are confused with the truth.”

Mr Foley’s boss, Phil Balboni, of the GlobalPost news organisation, said: “This is totally false and contradicted by a very significant body of incontrovertible evidence.

“We have multiple eyewitness accounts from hostages held with Jim as recently as last month. It’s a disgrace that this was ever broadcast or published.”

Mr Foley’s family has released a transcript of a letterhe wrote to them in June, conveyed by a Danish hostage who committed the letter to memory before he was released. Hostages’ letters home were confiscated by their kidnappers.

The fact that Daniel Rye Ottosen saw Mr Foley in June proves that Dr Shabaan’s claim, motivated in part by the desire to play up the alleged role of Free Syrian Army in his death, cannot be true.

It is, however, just one of the increasing number of conflicting claims about Mr Foley’s death that have arisen since the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) posted a video online last week showing his decapitated body.

Some experts who have analysed the video of Mr Foley’s last moments have concluded that at least two people took part in killing him. Two different knives appear in the film, one held by the British jihadist who speaks in the video, and a second lying on the ground next to Mr Foley’s body.

One forensic analyst has suggested the British killer is only pretending to cut Mr Foley’s throat in the video, as no blood is seen, despite the knife being drawn backwards and forwards six times, and Mr Foley does not struggle, which could mean he had been told the whole film was a stunt.

Whitehall sources have also said it remains a possibility that the man whose voice is heard in the video, identified as a kidnapper called “John”, may not be the hooded figure shown in the film. Isil may have used a British voiceover to add shock value to the film and to make it more difficult for the security services to identify the killer.

Dr Shabaan’s claim, though bogus, does raise the question of exactly when Mr Foley was killed. On August 13 GlobalPost and the Foley family received an email stating that the 40-year-old would be “executed”, and the video was posted on August 19.

Until now it had been assumed that Mr Foley was executed on or shortly after August 13, but there is no proof that he was still alive at the time, and it remains possible that he had already been murdered and that his killers delayed publicising his death either to get a safe distance away from the location where he was killed, or to ensure maximum publicity by releasing it on a day when there were no other major international news stories.